Willem Smit of Dutch collective Personal Trainer told us about his love for the lick in Suuns' "Armed For Peace"
Willem Smit: When I was in school me and my friends started to mess around with magic mushrooms. I think we were relatively very careful about everything and tried to look out for each other, and only did it at someone's house, in a safe zone. We'd think about bringing cool stuff with us and playing all sorts of music. We soon found out that when it comes to objects, you can bring in a million super colorful objects, but you'd probably end up staring at the trashcan lid or a rug for a very long time. We played a lot of music back too, mainly music we deemed "trippy," kind of in a similar way to the colorful objects. But with music it definitely worked differently, and it always really had a huge impact on the vibe in the room, especially if it sounded "trippy." I was a big fan of pretty straight-forward sounding music, pretty snobby in my own way, and thought a lot of music was over-the-top, or too bombastic or dramatic. But when we were taking the mushrooms we listened to Wish You Were Here and Porcupine Tree, and it all sounded insane and perfect.
I got into this band called Suuns' second record, and we played the first song of their first record, which we had never heard before. Starts out way too cool, especially when you're high, and then after a very long minute and a half this guitar riff is thrown into the mix with these heavy live drums. It was so cocky and muscular sounding, and it rocked so hard! I hated it and I loved it too. We were all so blown away by how amazing that guitar riff was. I really like it now. It kind of slides all over the place, like it's being thrown around and being caught right before it hits the ground, if that makes sense. I think a lot of guitar lines I really like are kind of fragmented and drunken-sounding. I also like MDM by Jo Passed, which is similarly wild. Plus Dutch band Geo's riff in "Hydrate," which sounds like total nonsense, until you hear it played exactly the same way three times. There it almost sounds like a mocking meta-commentary.
Personal Trainer's Human Assholes album is out now.
Photo credit: Sophie Koterus Korting
